Much of the pro-Liberty movement, including the present author, seems to focus on the role of education in being the prime driver towards a world free of state violence and coercion. We believe that informing people of the true nature of the state (i.e. no better than a band of thieving thugs) will incite people to embrace freedom and reject government intervention.

However, a great deal more thought needs to be turned to whether, rather than people wilfully and decisively rejecting government, the “revolution” will come about through a seemingly more mundane and passive method – that of simply making anything that government does irrelevant.

We are already bearing witness to several instances of this. The internet, and the increased accessibility to the world wide web through portable devices, renders almost inert any government attempt to control information, the whole Wikileaks saga perhaps being the most profound testament to this. Indeed it is possible to suggest that the average person today has quicker and better access to information than Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton did a mere twenty to thirty years ago. Added to this is the infancy of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin demonstrating how it is possible to curb government currency and capital controls and render physical borders irrelevant. In spite of the fact that virtual currency appears to be far from perfect in these early days, one cannot overlook the promise that their idea if not their present execution holds for the future. And in the United States 3D printing seems to be taking the bite out of gun control.

The marvellous thing also is that these mini-revolutions occur without violence and bloodshed – there is no fighting, no overthrow and no killing. Indeed this is not unusual as previous civil strife and conflict has not been about government per se but, rather, over who controls the government. The struggle of the twenty-first century, however, is over getting government out of the way entirely, regardless of who is in charge of it. We should not be surprised, therefore, that there will not be one big and violent revolution to overthrow government for ever but, rather, hundreds of small, decentralised and peaceful revolts that will simply cause government to wither away in helplessness.

This is not to suggest, of course, that government will not fight back in these areas; indeed governments, as they start collapsing from over-borrowing, overspending and eventual bankruptcy, will try ever more desperately to enforce increased controls and pluck all of the remaining feathers from the golden geese of their citizenry. But the more those geese are plucked the more they flap towards an escape and independent individuals have, historically, been better at what we might call the “invention of circumvention” than the government has been at stopping it.

But let us focus on the one area of government that is both its method of function and, according to the beliefs of the average Joe, it’s raison d’être – violence. Government commits its horrendous abuses and enriches its participants through the use of force against others. But is also supposed to protect the common citizen from the use of force by others and this is why government is still regarded as necessary. What if, then, an invention would enable any person, at extremely low cost, to protect his or her person and property from all forms of force? I have very little idea as to what this could be – an invisible force field around each object you own, perhaps? This is a matter for the genius of inventors. But imagine the result – in one swoop you would eliminate both the ability of government to tax, steal, imprison, kill, maim and live off the fat of everyone else and you would completely eradicate its reason for existence. For if people can now protect themselves from invasion of their person and property at very low cost, why bother with government? Why would anyone pay taxes for an army or police force when this new, cheap, method prevents the very reason for their existence? Of course, people may continue to pay “taxes” voluntarily for some service that the current administrative set up may be perceived to be providing. But there is nothing wrong with this if that is what people want to do with their own money. The bite of force, however, will be lost and government will be relegated (one might say promoted) to the same level of every other market player – having to offer people a valuable service in return for its voluntarily paid revenue.

We should, therefore, urge all inventors to dust off their drawing books and get working on such a marvellous invention. It may, quite literally, save the world before it drowns in a sea of statist despotism.